


Paths That Cross

by Dragonie



Series: Rain in the Desert [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Pre-Lonesome Road, Some Christine and Raul but I Don't Think Enough to Warrant Inclusion in Their Tags, if you have not played the dlcs this will not make much sense, pre-game, slight description of a very unpleasant injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 10:45:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14518779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonie/pseuds/Dragonie
Summary: The Divide was the first time they spoke. But their paths had crossed in myriad ways before that, long before she understood the meaning of it, chasing each other’s tails through the desert.





	Paths That Cross

    Courier Jane Finn stands on a ridge, looking out at the valley before her. The Divide, locals call this place; an impassable gulf in the desert, hot as the sun and filled with Deathclaws, an indelible border between Mojave and NCR. Old World called it Death Valley, a ghoul once told her, and they didn’t even have the Deathclaws then. Folks steer well clear of the place, since the bombs.

    She can believe it. Squinting against the sun, all she can see up to the brilliant blue horizon is sunbaked rock and burning sand, dirt-brown and ash-grey. Sun beats heavy down on her, here, even at the edges, sweat beading at the back of her neck. But Jane Finn knows deserts; has walked her share, in her time, much younger and greener than she is now. Walked Deathclaw country, too, and she’s _good_ at staying out of the way of the beasts. And this route could shave _days_ from the trip between Primm and Inyo, avoid the tolls on the Old 395.

    Jane takes a deep breath to steel herself, and steps into the Divide.

 

    —

 

    He finds a bootprint, sheltered from the wind by an outcropping of rock. Squared-off toe and a slight heel, like the old gaudy riding boots favoured by the West. Small, too, he thinks; stories did say a woman.

    Has to stop and look at it for a while, just to make sure it’s real.

    Heard tell of a lone Courier walking this road, making a vein of it, pumping life into the small community at its heart. Followed her tracks through the valley, fleeting traces until now: disturbed sand here, where the wind hand blown dust over a recent trail; a smudge of grey there, from campfire ash. This was the first solid sign of the rumoured Courier he’d found; like seeing her face, he thought. Made it… personal, somehow.

    Caesar didn’t order him here; rumours likely hadn’t reached his ears, head too filled with visions of the Wall, the Bear, his Rubicon. No, he came here himself, wanted to see if one Courier could truly build a people, see what kind of woman it would take to do so. Something in the notion’s caught in his mind since he first heard the rumours passed down by drunk caravan hands in a trailside inn, and he has to see for himself, has to _know_.

    Name alone - “Jane Finn” - says little. Artfully bland, suggests his Frumentarius’s mind; perhaps a false name. Past to run from, perhaps; no shortage of that in the Wasteland. Could be of the Bull, like he is, though not likely for a woman. This mystery woman, this Courier, casts a shadow on his thoughts - her and that town of hers, untouched by Bear or Bull - until he finds himself following that shadow into the valley of the Divide, staring at a footprint in the dust.

    He follows the trail further, through winding canyons and over baking plains, until he rounds a corner and sees it, his Ithaca.

    Shacks of corrugated iron sprout out from hollowed-out shells of Old World buildings. Children with bare feet and scraped knees chase each other around the dusty earth, laughing. Men and women with lined faces and calloused hands tend to meagre rows of planters, draw water from hand pumps. Narrow trails lead up to what look like old silos, stamped stars and stripes in peeling paint, same as the one on his back. Here and there, some have copied it on their huts with spray cans. Red, white, and blue; they know the meaning of it.

    And here, at last, Ulysses comes Home.

 

    —

 

    At Navarro, Jane picks up a package.

    A stern-faced soldier hands her what looks like a metal briefcase, tightly shut and stamped with symbols: the stars of old America, the barred ‘E’ of the Enclave. She knows better than to ask what it is; NCR probably has no clue either. Isn’t the first time they’ve hired a courier to ferry some piece of puzzling Enclave tech to one of their scientists - hear the stories in hushed whispers in every roadside inn, details growing more outlandish with every telling - but the destination comes as some surprise.

    The little town in the Divide’s been growing, it’s true, but still seems pretty remote for NCR to roll a team in. Must have heard about the old silos, somehow, come sniffing around. They’ll have their work cut of for them there, she thinks; locals keep well clear of the bunkers, say the security bots are still active, even two hundred years later. Might give up on the place, in the end.

    The unsmiling officer rattles out a spiel about secrecy before giving her a stiff nod. He’s got stars on his collar; she’s sure someone once told her that’s what marks them as Important, but these are not her people, and the distinction is meaningless to her. He turns and walks away, back straight as a pole, and Jane knows the type. He has given her his orders, and expects them to be carried out immediately; no point in pleasantries with subordinates.

    There is nothing more to be done. She tucks the package safe into her satchel and heads toward the Divide.

 

    —

 

    Sees her coming on the horizon, her stride bold, sure of herself. Caught sight of her a time or two before, times he comes here, always from a distance. Never tried to draw close before, never felt the need for it. Can see enough of her in the land around him, changes she brings, life she pumps through this place with every step. _Words_ couldn’t say half as much.

    She walks through the town, greets people by name, hands out deliveries, letters, takes more, connects this place with the world outside. Package in her arms catches his eye: stars stamped on it, like on the silos above; marks of America, and others he’s never seen before, new ones. Feels something swell in his chest, like the first time he caught sight of this place, something Bull couldn’t bring no matter how wide it conquered. Can’t get close to see - NCR soldiers swarming the place like cazadores, too much risk of being recognised, have to do something about them soon - but it draws him in nonetheless. Courier’s more than just a simple messenger, he knows; delivers life to a nation, the hope of America reborn. Carries it in her arms like he on his back, maybe, but with more promise, walks her own path. Feels like he understands her more, now.

 

    —

 

    Later, as he tries fruitlessly to drag himself across the rubble, ears ringing, blood pooling in his mouth, shattered ribs stabbing out his sides, he realises that he understands nothing at all.

 

    —

 

    Jane hands the package to some NCR scientist, gets paid, and heads off to her next delivery. She doesn’t look back.

 

    —

 

    He survives. Doesn’t believe it himself, but he survives. Goes back to the Bull; nowhere else to go, not anymore. Caesar has a task for him: burn all trace of Malpais from the world. Can guess what it means: man survived, even if Caesar won’t admit it.

    Strange, he thinks, how _easy_ it is to fall back into old routines. Was ready to leave the Bull behind, talked himself into it; now all those plans lie under layers of rubble at the bottom of a crater. No future in the Bull, perhaps, but not even a _present_ in the Divide. Now he is a Frumentarius again, and a Frumentarius follows orders.

    As he watches the houses of New Canaan burn, another nation turned to ash, he thinks of her.

 

    —

 

    No job brings her back to the Divide for a while, and she thinks some other courier must’ve picked up the route, followed in her footsteps. That’s all right. She’s got other work, and she’s sure something will take her down that way sooner or later.

    When she hears rumours later - of radiation, of scouring winds, of people never returning - she’s not sure what to make of them. Wouldn’t be the first time a town’s disappeared into the wastes - she knows _that_ far too well - but she hopes they’ve got something wrong. A trail-story that’s grown with the telling, or talking about another corner of the canyon, maybe. Always seemed like good folks, there; be a crying shame to lose them. She’ll check, next time her road brings her that way.

    But somehow, there’s always somewhere else she needs to be, some other package that needs delivering, and that time never comes. The Divide disappears into the mists of her memory, another place she’s been through and left behind.

 

    —

 

    He looks over the job listing, White Legs storm drums still ringing in his ears. Smells of a trap, no doubt there; wouldn’t send so many couriers on the same run if all were expected to come back alive. Little enough danger on the route itself; must be someone else after the package, had to send out decoys, hope to throw the hunters off the scent.

    Old man said a robot made the order, one of House’s machines, and that’s piqued his interest. He looks at the chip the old man’s handed him, sees the symbol on it, thinks of the Old World weather station at the Fort, the one that’s been troubling Caesar’s thoughts since he first set up camp. He thinks of the way the air thrums, right before a storm sweeps in.

    A good Legionary would take the job, turn the chip in to Caesar. A good Legionary wouldn’t think of taking it, just to see what fate it might bring.

    He scans the list of couriers, makes out the names through Nash’s scratchy handwriting. Some he knows, some he doesn’t, some are of the Bull, like him. One catches his eye, beside a crossed-out number seven:

    “Jane Finn”.

    Nash doesn’t understand why Ulysses turns down the job. Couldn’t, if he tried. Knows, now, the job was never intended for him. There’s only one Courier in the Mojave meant to carry Death in her arms.

 

    —

 

    Jane takes the chip from Nash and turns it between her fingers. She’s delivered weirder, perhaps - a whole Deathclaw skeleton hauled on her back from Dayglow to Boneyard, what looked like a mummified toe from Gecko to Vault City, that strange package from Navarro - but this job’s got an odd air to it. Her order says “6 of 6,” and Nash shrugs when she asks about it, tells her the other couriers’ items seemed just as innocuous. Odd business afoot, he says, but it’s never been his job to question. The chip’s got the logo of the Lucky 38 on it, she notices, and she’s heard no one’s come out of there but robots in two centuries.

    She tucks the chip in her jacket, and gives him a friendly nod. Maybe when she meets this “agent,” she can find out what it’s all about. She fixes her eyes to the tower on the horizon, and walks.

 

    —

 

    They catch up with her in Goodsprings, and her eyes are still open when the first shovel-load of gravedirt hits her face.

 

    —

 

    “In - bzzt! - other news,” Vegas’ smooth voice pours from the radio, broken up with static this far from the city. “A package courier found shot in the head - zzt! - Goodsprings - bzzt! - -tedly regained consciousn- - zzt! - full recovery.”

    He stares wordlessly at the radio for a while, and switches it off.

 

    —

 

    “Sounds like you two had a history,” Nash says, “for him to act like that.”

    Jane frowns.

    She doesn’t _have_ that kind of history with anyone, far as she knows. She’s always thought she touched the world light, left the kind of footstep that blows away in the first breeze. Could have poached someone’s route without realising it, folks do get competitive in this business, but the way Johnson talks about it, sounds like something more _personal_ than that.

    Never known anyone to have a grudge against her, personal-like; not the kind that’d cause a man to turn down a job in the hopes that she’d get killed doing it. Had plenty go after her life before, but never because of _her_ ; always about what she was carrying, or who she was carrying it for. She doubts the man in the checkered suit even knows name.

    Makes her uneasy, the thought of having an enemy in the shadows. Feels like she has enough guns aimed at her already.

    “Maybe he thought your name was bad luck,” Nash continues, with an ambivalent shrug. “Not for me to say.”

    Jane’s still curious, but he doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate further. He has no leads, and she has no clue, and she’s too busy chasing after the mystery man who ‘killed’ her to hunt down one who simply hoped she might die. But the uneasy feeling lingers, and on some quiet nights, when all she hears is wind and distant coyote howls and ED-E’s mechanical hum, she thinks back to Primm and wonders how she came to have so many targets painted on her back.

 

    —

 

    He paints the colours on the walls, marks his route. Habit, more than anything else; warnings won’t mean much to the mindless shells that wander this place. Wants to leave a trace of himself on history, maybe, have this barren crater bear the proof that he existed, that he once walked here. He looks at the stars and stripes, the symbol of a nation now dead twice over, and the idea feels hollow in his mind.

    Big Empty will not remember him. Its masters do not even remember themselves.

    Maybe someone else will follow the markers. Seek something here, like the old man, like the Brotherhood woman, like him. Leave tracks for them to follow, like the Courier left tracks for him, long ago.

    The Courier. Thought of her a lot, lately, speaking with the Brotherhood woman. Idea of her coming here, following his footsteps in this blasted land, there’s a twisting sense of irony to it.

    Thought lingers in his mind, long after he leaves the crater.

 

    —

 

    She stumbles across a ranch in the desert, northeast of Nipton. It’s not too long abandoned; a small herd of docile Bighorners still graze among fields that haven’t entirely withered, not yet.

    She picks a few barrel cactus fruit, a handful of mesquite pods, from planters that aren’t entirely dried up. An old windmill, a few blades missing, makes a rusty creak as it turns in the breeze. Fills up a couple flasks at the water pump, and it’s still mostly clean. There’s a toolbox near the machinery; looks like the owner stopped in the middle of a project. Sniper’s nest up the hill, too, with a good view of the surroundings; whoever lived here planned on defending it.

    She opens the door to the hut, and the move stirs up the dust, can see it shimmer in the air where it passes through the beams of golden sunlight that leak in through the holey roof. Dust is all it is, though; no blood, no bones, no pervasive smell of rot that hangs around where someone’s died forgotten. No sign of the previous owner, as if they just… up and left, some day.

    She remembers the banners over Nipton, the greasy black smoke, and thinks she might know why.

    It feels quiet, here, though; calm, like a world removed from the chaos of the Mojave. There’s resources here; she could water the fields, clean out the dust, fix up the pump, or ask Raul for help. Could raise Bighorners like her mother did, long ago...

    She shakes her head. It’s a nice dream, but in the real world, the Legion is massing, the storm clouds are gathering, and she has somewhere else she needs to be.

    She pulls her duster tight around her shoulders and trudges north, towards Vegas.

 

    —

 

    He is back in the Divide again, and nothing has changed. Used to be every time he came, the town was bigger, if only by a little: a few new shack walls propped up against the ruins, more women with babes slung across their chests; a nation growing in the harsh womb of the canyon. But now Divide was a graveyard, and dead things do not grow.

    Trio of machines fly overhead, dip into the deepest cracks in the earth. Pays them little mind; they are scavengers, he’s found, seeking scrap to build more of themselves. Closest thing to the nursing mothers the Divide will ever know again, he supposes, save for the Deathclaws and Tunnelers. Now a land for machines and monsters, not for men, and he is an intruder here.

    Machines live in the old silos - Hopeville, Ashton, here - flitting around the last of the giants, the ones that slept through the Courier’s call. Here is where the bulk of them are, spears and spear-tips, and here is where he’s made his main camp. Feels fitting, somehow; place stands like a temple, an altar to the monstrous power of the Old World, that can call down fire and brimstone like the god of the New Canaanites. He’s not sure whether he is its high priest or its sacrifice.

    Machine swoops back up again, a chunk of metal and wires clutched in one robotic claw. Moves sluggish; trouble flying under the weight of the thing. Curious, he takes a look, and his gut turns to ice.

    There’s a symbol on the metal, seen only once before; a barred “E” surrounded by stars. Sign he once thought was America’s rebirth.

    He scrambles for his rifle, set aside, _carelessly_ aside, on the cliff - shoot the thing down, let the package fall, let it be lost again among the ruins it created - but the machine is soon joined by its fellows, which share its burden, and they are already specks on the horizon before he can draw a proper bead on them, heading towards Hopeville.

    Ulysses stares for while at where they have gone, and thinks.

 

    —

 

    Christine has been a friend, a shining jewel amidst the hell of the Madre, and Jane lingers awhile in the Executive Suites. She knows she must go down, soon, and face the Old Man, but she basks in the solace of companionship while she can. Christine, sweet thing, indulges her just this while, though she’s waited much longer than Jane for this revenge. She speaks of the road that took her here, of tracking Elijah through the Big Empty and beyond.

    She speaks of her saviour, the other courier, the man with the flag on his back, and a curious look comes in her eye when she tells of his own hunt for a mysterious courier, a slight cock of the head, a frown of concentration. Jane thinks of the story Nash told her, about the Chip job, and the courier, the stranger who seemed to know her, somehow.

    They do not speak more about the man, or his target, but she is sure that she and Christine have come to the same conclusion.

 

    —

 

    She moves into Wolfhorn Ranch, after the Madre. Leaves, just like that; stuffs her favourite things into her pack and hauls them out of the Strip. Crashes at the King’s, when she has to stay the night in Vegas. Her friends do not understand. Sure, the Lucky 38 is creepy, they say, but it’s convenient, and it’s safe. Why move to a shack in the middle of nowhere, with Legion wandering around?

    She doesn’t know how to tell them that she can no longer abide that dead casino, haunting the Vegas skyline. There are too many ghosts there.

    She waters the fields and planters, scatters feed for the Bighorners. Gets Raul to take a look at the pump, does all the things she thought of doing, back before she hit Vegas, and it feels like a lifetime ago. They share a sarsaparilla and talk and laugh in the afternoon sun as he tightens the final screws, and she thinks he, perhaps, understands her more than he’s letting on.

    The sun goes down, and the Bighorners low, and the windmill creaks, and the moonlight trickles in through the holes in the ceiling, and she sleeps better that night than she has since long before she followed that recording into that wretched bunker.

 

    —

 

    “He wouldn’t have come with a caravan,” Graham says, and by now, she knows exactly who he is talking about.

 

    —

 

    Jane remembers, in Zion, when she fought that yao guai, the Ghost of She. Saw the beast flame and split into four; couldn’t tell what was real and what was not, with the datura soaking into her brain.

    She feels a bit like that at the Big Empty.

    Between the brain bots, and the empty men, and the angry bones, and the fact that she is apparently walking around without some parts that she knows you kind of need to live, she feels that surely, maybe, not all of this is real. But she can’t tell where the miracle of science ends and the absurdity of hallucination begins.

    She pokes around Higgs Village, and a tiny Deathclaw pops out of a doghouse, growling at her. He has a blue collar with a bone-shaped tag. She doesn’t even blink.

    Perhaps the floating brains were telling the truth, and they really have stolen her mind.

    Amid the madness, she clings to what she knows is real, what she knows from before: the traces left by Christine, Elijah, and this mysterious other courier. Keeps camp, where he once nursed Christine back to health; listens to the tapes there. She has a voice to go with him, now. It’s not familiar. He speaks of the Divide, of some message; his words hold no meaning to her, but she can’t shake the feeling that they’re about her, nevertheless.

    An Old World flag on his back, the tapes say, and sure enough, he’s left a marker by the entrance, Old World stars and stripes in blue. She finds others, as she wanders the crater; makes them touchstones of reality through the haze. There’s a pattern to them, she figures out: blue for safety, red for danger, white to mark his path. Stranger guides her through the Empty without realising it.

    She recalls his voice on the tapes, the anger in his voice as he spoke of this “Courier,” and she wonders how he might feel about that.

 

    —

 

    Ulysses sprays the stars on the fallen wall, the final marker in a trail meant to lead her to him. He has everything ready, now; the giants are ready to wake, when she brings the package here once more. Two of them, at last, will have an ending to things.

    Makes his final checks, and sends out the signal. Leaves it repeating, speaking into the void, waiting for her to listen.

    He sets up at the Temple, and waits.

 

    —

 

    Courier Jane Finn stands on a ridge, looking out at the valley before her. Checks the message on her Pip-Boy again. The coordinates match. The voice is familiar.

    She has been expecting this for some time, now.

    It’s not the Divide she remembers, in the haze of a previous life. Cracks split the ground like the scars on her head, her back, above her heart. The sun glowers angry red behind a veil of dust. The storm winds screech through the canyons like angry ghosts. Something terrible has happened here, and someone has brought her here to see. If she walks in there, she’s not certain that she’ll be walking out again. But she has questions, and if she walks away now, then she’ll never know the answers.

    Jane takes a deep breath to steel herself, and steps into the Divide.

**Author's Note:**

> Feels like it's been ages since I've written a fic lmao aaaaaa
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3


End file.
